Republican Party - The new Taliban?

Original Link: http://blabber.groups.vox.com/library/post/6a01101806904b860f0110166714f4860d.html

By Mario Piperni

How ridiculous have Republicans become in their battle to change the stimulus package? Well, read what Republican Texas Rep. Pete Sessions had to say on the role his party needs to adopt.

"Insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban -- no, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their front line message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

The Taliban?!!? Pete Sessions has chosen the Taliban as a role model for his party to emulate in fighting the stimulus bill? Lunacy. Every time Republicans open their mouth these days, it's a reminder of why the electorate threw them out of office with the force they did. Republicans, in general, have one single motive in all they do: getting back into power. And that motive takes precedent over the welfare of their country. This is clear.

No, Republicans have no desire for finding common ground and it appears that President Obama has finally come to this realization. While I don't think he'll completely abandon his attempt at creating a new bipartisanship era, there are signs that for the time being, he's ready to start playing hardball. Obama was emphatic this week in declaring that returning to the same stale policies which took the country into the current economical crisis, is not an option. As Michael Hirsch wrote in Newsweek,

"The reason Obama is getting so few votes is that he is no longer setting the terms of the debate over how to save the economy. Instead the Republican Party--the one we thought lost the election--is doing that. And the confusion and delay this is causing could realize Obama's worst fears, turning "crisis into a catastrophe," as the president said Wednesday. Obama's desire to begin a "post-partisan" era may have backfired. In his eagerness to accommodate Republicans and listen to their ideas over the past week, he has allowed the GOP to turn the haggling over the stimulus package into a decidedly stale, Republican-style debate over pork, waste and overspending. This makes very little economic sense when you are in a major recession that only gets worse day by day."

Enough already. The Republicans have gotten some of the tax cuts they wanted written into the stimulus package. Aside from that, as President Obama noted yesterday, Republican complaints that it's a "spending bill" and not a "stimulus bill" is ridiculous. Stimulus implies spending! How difficult is it for anyone to figure that one out?

Make no mistake about it - Republicans are playing politics. They're the minority party and they're not happy.